Friday, January 31, 2014

1. This was not a productive week at all. I ended up not attendingchurch on Sunday because I as sick and that has taken my entireweek. Today I am feeling a little better but a tad wore out.

2. This week the boys had dental appointments. We so love ourchildren's dentist and I am so sad to hear they are no longer goingto accept our insurance. I can't afford to pay out of pocket for 4children and so we will have to find another dentist. I just hopewe can find one we love like this one. Insert sad face here.

3. Our house looks like a tornado went through it. That's what happens when mom is sick. So I can't wait this week to get startedon Motivated Moms. (A little something I get to review with the schoolhouse crew. )

4. I love to read and am reading several books at once. They are and in no particular order...

The BibleCraveThe Daniel Plan12 Steps to be Organized Sing you Home by JodiPicoult

5. I always wake up at 3 or 4 am and then want to go back to sleep later but can't because the little ones wake up. Blaaaa.

Let is snow. Let is snow. We have had so muchsnow this winter that it shocks me and yet the kidscan't really go out and play in it because of the cold
temperatures. I am hoping this weekend when they goup a bit they can get out and blow off some steam so tospeak. Looking out our window my son superboy createdthis snowy art scene.

We also did a mini art study on Tiffany lamps and stained glass.Superboy designed his own lamp below.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Let's just be forthright here. When you home educate most of the
time that means that you are on one income. Now I know there are
some out there that do both. They school and they work maybe part
time or have an at home business. For many of us though educating at
home means one income. Your time as their teacher is spent working
on your children's morals , values, and education. Now I work a part time
job in children's ministry and sometimes part time at the local elementary
school as before after care coordinator but mostly I enjoy those and they
don't pay all that great that we have an abundance of wealth coming in.

For us the Biggest Resource we could have is our computer (laptop)
and our printer. Without it I wouldn't be able to produce all the
great activities to my children that I do. So for our last day of
Homeschooling Essentials I'd like to share some of my favorite free
resources with you. Before I do if you missed it you might want to
stop and read the other four posts about what I feel is essential to
home educate...

Family Focus- Sharing a brief look at why we school at Home. The Good Book- The importance of each on of my children holding
and having Gods word at their finger tips. Promote Free Thinking- Allowing our children to be thinkers. Not just
doers or followers but to use their minds to find what is right for them. Make a Plan- Being organized and creating a plan you can be accountable
for your child's education.

Ambleside Online- Another complete curriculum using the Charlotte
Mason style of learning.

Khan Academy- Your child starts out taking a pretest and then the
system adapts to your child's learning style. Teaching with videos
and other resources. (We use this one in Alg. all the time)

Home School Share- offers a wide variety of lessons and activities
for all ages of children. I like to do many of the lapbooks available
through homeschool share. I also like that it matches to friar.

Homeschool Radio Shows- My kids love Cinnamon bear. We listened to
this one many years ago and it's still a holiday favorite. Homeschool
radio show offers free resources from time to time. You can also purchase
many of their radio shows. Great listening skills.

Free Homeschool Deals- This is one of my very favorites. Each day you
will receive a message with new free resource around the blogs and
the internet including free kindle books .

Homeschool Creations- Jolanthe is a blogger but she has some amazing
resources on her website for Early Elementary and Pre K. There is also
a geography resource as well as many other free printables.

Donna Young- Mom's need to be organized and Donna Young offers
the tools to do just that. There are other printables available for your
child as the work through their studies.

Hippo Campus- offers many free resources for educating those upper
level grades. High school and college courses.

This week I only have one art work to share. My son and I were looking
at art this week from Ancient Roman. We found some pictures of
the walls of ruins from Mt. Vesuvius. Many of the walls were done
as frescoes which were similarly done in plaster. The work we looked
at showed painted windows of architecture of that time period.

Spirit created this work of art from a window view. It was up to
him what he wanted to show out of his window. Then is
was to watercolor paint it.

He shows a sunny blue sky with clouds. A tree growing in a garden
with a walkway and a trellis. Reminds me a little of the yard we had at
our old house. I'm thinking he was basing it off of that.

My very favorite Calendar planner is this one by Blue Sky.
I found mine at Walmart. I had never seen a planner like this one.
It has the Calendar on one page. The Things to do list on the other.

Now what I like the most about this planner is this...
I like that I have so much space on each day. Remember me telling
you I'm a list maker. Well I can make a list for the day and have so much
space to do so. Love this planner!!! It helps me stay organized.

Now I also keep a notebook....
I use my notebook as a place to store the things I use during our
school session. Generally I use it more for storage. What I really
like to use is a clipboard. I typically take out all the forms I need and
attach them to my board. I find the three ring binders to bulky to work
with and comb binding can get expensive. Plus I am ever changing my
mind as to what I will use to plan and organize.

The front pocket of my notebook has my sons Barton program. The CD

is the manual for everything. I usually print out that weeks worth of work or

what I think we will complete that week. It sort of depends on weather he is

understanding things or he's not and how fast we go. Those things always go

in the front so I know where they are. The CD has gone missing a few times in

the shuffle of clean up. Since I have put it in the binder it has not gone missing

once. My notebook is divided into 5 sections. The first is the Calendar section.

This page when the time comes may be attached to my clipboard. I am using this one to help with keeping track of attendance. Basically I will highlight the day after all the kiddos have completed their work. I downloaded it free from ...

When you get to her blog click the 12 planning pages on her side bar
and you will locate her original post.

For each of my children I created a planner similar to this one below.
These a screen shots of our originals. You can see Mon. -Wed here.
Thursday and Friday have music instead of art and Science instead
of History. There is plenty of space for me to write our plan. All of
this goes on my clip board. The older children have their plan on a
clipboard of their own. They can cross things off as they go. All their
plans are slightly different depending on what they are working on.

This one is for my 2nd grader.

﻿

To me having a plan and being organize is Essential for

our Home education experience without it I think we would be

less productive and scattered. This may look like we are not flexible
like we stick to the plan and that is it but in all honesty we really use

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

I grew up in a public school setting. Now I'm not going to say I had
the worst education because I didn't but there were many things about

It that I grew to hate. One was that I was lost in the system. There was no
creativity and the right answer was their answer. The systems answer.
Now I'm not one to conform my ideas to blend in with what others want
or what others think I should be and so my creativity was squashed. I had to
blend in there to succeed. I remember history classes being the worst for me.
I loved the stories but the classes were so boring. I had one teacher who
wrote notes on the board. Three boards all the way around the classroom
and I was to sit during that time period and just copy his notes. That was class.
That was history. What creativity is there in that. I had another who would
give me the answers to the test before the test the next day. So I didn't have to
think or give my opinion because there was one opinion. That was of the text book. I could research no other idea or if I did it wasn't allowed or considered a right answer.

Similar things occurred in my other classes. Math in particular. There was one way to solve it. Yet there are a number of ways to solve math. I often hear moms say why does the math book show us so many ways to solve it. Why not just solve it the old way and its done. I don't believe in that. Why show them one way when maybe they can think of another and do just as well. Conformity... We are teaching our kids not to think. When what we should be doing is modeling and waiting...Allowing them to ask questions and find the answers themselves.

Now again my school experience was not all terrible. I had the best
art teacher around. He was a free thinker. Even though he taught us art
he taught us so much more. He allowed us to talk and to think for ourselves
out loud about what we wanted in our lives. It was my favorite class and I
learned so much in that environment. I think of that teacher when I model
our school. Not the whole public school mentality but just the free thinking.
Allowing my kids to express their feelings and express what they are thinking.

Have you ever heard of Product Vs. Process in Art? If you haven't
Product are the cutesy little craft projects that have one end result. Everyones
looked the same. The art has a step by step instruction to say create a flower

and vase. In the end everyones art looks very similar. Then there is Process.
I experienced this awhile ago with my 4 year old daughter at the beginning of
the school year. I gave each of the children a canvas and left them go. She
began painting with orange, then yellow, then blue, then green , then pink and
so on covering the entire canvas each time . Maybe not in that order but you get the idea. The paint sometimes painted over well and sometimes it didn't She ended up with a grayish purplely canvas. Now that is process. She learned so much there that I could not have taught her. She learned about color and mixing color. She learned about using a paint brush and washing .She learned about texture and depth. So much was going on in that little canvas practice. That was process. It may not be beautifully done but the thought process is what the child needs the most.

The great thing about Home education is that we can allow them to
explore what they need to to learn to the best of their ability. We
can allow that grayish mess to dry and can paint over it with the pink
she originally wanted. We can figure things out and learn at our pace
with our hands and our minds. This thinking is essential to our schooling.

I'd like to share with you an example from my little ones. ...
﻿

﻿

This is my little Sweet Pea. Over Christmas we found a link to Santa's
reindeer webcam. Sweet pea was taken by this webcam and watched thereindeer for hours. She wanted to know what they ate, how often they
ate. She wanted to know all about them and she wanted to learn to draw
them too. It was trial and error. She is four after all but she found her process.
She learned all about an animal and it was all her idea. She was learning
and loving learning and didn't even realize it. ﻿

Superboy last year wanted to learn how to make puppets and
put on puppet shows. I bought him the material and allowed him
to figure it out. He make elaborate Puppets now. I should take some
pictures for you I haven't shared them in awhile. The end result was

his own. It was his thinking that lead him to this new love. ﻿

The last one I have here is my sons project on Recycling.
I kept it very open ended and he had to think. Use his mind and
be creative to find the end result. He even made stories up about his
robot. This is what I am talking about . One thing leading into another.

I guess what I am getting at is that something that is Essential to our
education is THINKERS.I don't want kids that routinely go through their
day . I want kids who know how to learn something new. I want them to
be creative in their ideas and to form their own opinions. This is essential
to our Education.

Friday, January 17, 2014

1. This week is Spirit's 8th Birthday. We celebrated at his
grandmas house and then on Saturday he is going glow golfing
with some friends. Sorry for the grainy photo this was a mom forgot
her camera so it was taken on my oldest phone photo.

2. My oldest daughter and I went Wedding Gown Shopping !!
Egads how did that happen. We took lots of photos but I want to
save the dress for family as a big surprise. She was lucky to find
THE ONE... We all cried . I am so happy for her . So happy she is
able to be able to marry her best friend.

3. I have so many little projects going on that it's hard to
keep up with what all I'm working on. Do you every get that
busy mom syndrome where you overbook yourself. This is me
right now .

4. My new favorite snack is frozen red grapes.
MMM so good.

5. I did a big clean out of my kitchen this week. I have some
more to do but it has become so much more manageable when I'm
cooking. As it was before it was so hard to find everything it had
gotten so cluttered. I am loving my new to me kitchen organization.
I will finish the last details this week.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Welcome to another post on the Virtual Refrigerator. I have
gathered with a group of 3 other bloggers working to share
our children's art each week. I feel that Art and creating things
with our hands is important to our studies. It is so nice to see
what other ideas there are out there for kids to do and to have
a platform to share my children's creations.

We would love to have your join us. You can share art,
crafts, or even photography in our link up.

We went through our art tub. I keep all of their art work in the tub for

the entire school year. Then we go back over it throwing away things we don't

want to keep and writing names and dates on the things we do. Then I place

them back in the tub. When the tub is full we relook at our work and make decisions

again about what to keep and what to throw. I have indicated the age my
children were at the time. They are a year sometimes two years older now.

Rejoice in the Lord Always.

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About Me

Welcome. When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child. ~Sophia Loren, I am a stay at home mom/work part-time mom and Have 5 children, 2 step children and 3 Grandchildren. I have worked in the childcare field for years and currently work for my church as a nursery supervisor. I post all things here that I enjoy God, Home education, being a mom, book reviews and about our home. My goal is to create a resource for other homeschool moms who are going through the same Joys,fun, challenges, and struggles. I hope you Enjoy your visit.

Education Statement

From everlasting to everlasting ,The Lords love is with those who fear him and his righteousness with their children's children....Then our sons in their youth will be like well - nurtured plants and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace....All the sons will be taught by the Lord and Great will be our childrens peace.....Psalms 103:17, 144:12 Isaiah 54:13